Chapter 53: Beneath the Cathedral

The ride back to the city was the fastest Hale’s poor horse had ever been pushed to go, with Garrick standing at the front of the cart and yelling at everyone on the road to get out of their way. They left just as the sun was setting over the golden fields of wheat, and behind them, three hundred and twelve people stood at the edge of the fields and watched them go, with no idea what had just happened.

Kai cast Minor Voice one last time before they got too far away.

(Thank you all for coming. Please make it home safely. I need to go find someone)

A lot of people had wanted to come with them, including Brannoch, Nerine, the fish woman and at least half the Sisters of the Silver Moon, but there wasn’t room for all of them in the cart, and Kai didn’t want three hundred people running through the city in the middle of the night. Brannoch had told him that he would bring the smiths to Hale’s house at first light if they weren’t back by morning, and Kai trusted him to do it, because Brannoch had never once promised him something he couldn’t actually do.

[Kai, your heartbeat has been very fast for a long time now]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[I am only telling you so that you know I noticed]

It was well after dark by the time they reached Hale’s house, and the front gate was hanging by one of its hinges. Two of the King’s guards were sitting on the front steps, one with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and the other holding his arm against his chest. Lanterns were burning in every window, and the old judge was standing in the doorway with his cane holding up most of his weight and a dark bruise spreading across his cheek.

"Mr. Mercer," Hale said, and for the first time since Kai had known him, he sounded defeated. "I am sorry. I was not able to stop them."

"Did anyone die?" Kai asked, hopping off the cart before it had fully stopped and nearly falling face first onto the ground.

"No," Hale said. "And I believe that was on purpose. They came over the garden wall an hour before sunset, about a dozen of them, all dressed in the same brown robes as the guards at the granary. They knew which room she was in, and they knew exactly how many guards we had, and they did not take a single other thing from the house." He handed Kai a piece of paper that had been folded in half. "They left this on her pillow."

Kai unfolded the paper, and the handwriting inside was elegant and precise, every letter perfectly formed.

My mother belongs to the Church. She will spend her last days in the place where she belongs. Do not come to the Conclave, and I will ensure that nothing happens to her. If you come, I cannot make that promise.

There was no signature, but Kai knew exactly who had written it.

Mira read it over Kai’s shoulder, and he felt her fingers dig into his arm.

"She’s taking her own mother as a hostage," Mira said.

"She is using her mother as a witness who cannot speak," Elowen said, and her voice was colder than Kai had ever heard it. "It is exactly what the Church has done to every god for the last forty years. If you cannot make them tell a lie, you make them silent."

Princess Seris already had a fresh page open in her notebook, and she was writing so hard that her charcoal kept snapping.

"If you do not go to the Conclave, you lose," Princess Seris said. "A god cannot be proven if he is not there to prove himself. And if you do go, she might hurt Celestine." She looked up at Kai with her green eyes blazing. "So we need to find Celestine before the Conclave, which is in four days."

"Five," Garrick said.

"It will be well past midnight by the time we find her," Princess Seris said. "So it is four."

Kai stared down at the note in his hands, because something about it wasn’t sitting right with him, and it took him a long moment to figure out what it was.

"In the place where she belongs," Kai said slowly. "Liora wouldn’t take her somewhere random. She’d take her somewhere that means something."

Sunny was standing at the edge of the lantern light, staring at the note with his jaw clenched so tightly that Kai could see a muscle twitching in his cheek.

"The Cathedral," Sunny said. "Celestine served there for thirty years. Every High Priestess before her was laid to rest in the crypts beneath it, and hers was the first urn they ever sent away to the Ashen Twins." His jaw tightened even further. "Nobody ever asked why. Liora would say that the crypts are where her mother belongs."

"The Cathedral is guarded," Hale said. "The King has had men at its doors ever since the warrant was issued. If she had walked in through the front, I would know."

"She would not need to walk in through the front," Sunny said. "There are tunnels beneath the Cathedral that run under half the city. When she escaped on the night of the fireplace, she went through a small door behind the Book of Oaths." He turned and looked Kai straight in the eyes. "I have lived in that Cathedral since I was six years old. I know where that door leads, and I know how to reach it from the inside."

[Kai]

"What?" Kai whispered.

[I can feel her. Celestine. The same way she told us she could feel me coming up the stairs. She is somewhere beneath the city, and she is very far down]

"Do you know where?" Kai whispered.

[No. Only that she is alive, and she is frightened, and there is something else down there with her]

"What kind of something?" Kai whispered.

Syraphim was quiet for a long time before she answered.

[I do not know. But it feels the way the sea cave felt before the bells rang]

Kai looked around at the people standing in the lantern light, Mira still holding onto his arm, Garrick with his hammer, Elowen with her blindfolded face turned towards the Cathedral, Sunny and Princess Seris, and the old judge with his bruised face. Then he folded Liora’s note in half and tucked it into his vest.

"We’re going now," Kai said.

Nobody told him no, and that was how Kai knew how scared every one of them really was.

The Cathedral looked different at night. During the day, it was beautiful, all white stone and gold trim shining above the city, but at night, it was just a giant black silhouette against the stars, with a few lanterns burning at the front doors where the King’s guards stood watch. Sunny marched up the front steps as if he still lived there, and the guards stepped out of his way the moment they saw who he was.

The great hall inside was dark and silent, lit only by a few candles burning in front of the statue of the Radiant Mother. The fireplace at the far end of the room still had a gaping hole in it from Kai’s missed Smite, and someone had swept all of the soot into a neat little pile beside it and then never come back for it.

"That was me," Kai whispered as they walked past it.

[Yes. I remember that one. You missed very well]

Sunny led them up the steps to the pedestal where the Book of Oaths still rested, closed now, and behind it, set so neatly into the wall that Kai would never have noticed it if he hadn’t watched Liora slip through it, was a small wooden door. Sunny pressed his palm against a carved sun in the center of it, and the door swung inward without a sound, revealing a narrow set of stone stairs spiraling down into the darkness.

A rush of cold air came up the stairwell, smelling of old stone and wet earth, with a hint of something sweet underneath it, like flowers that had been left in a vase for far too long.

"I’ll go first," Garrick said, raising his hammer, which began to glow a bright gold and lit up the first few steps in front of him. "If there’s anything down there that wants to eat somebody, it can eat me first."

"That’s really noble of you," Kai said.

"I’m bigger than you," Garrick said. "It’ll get full quicker."

Mira found Kai’s hand in the dark, laced her fingers through his and held on tight, and neither of them said anything about it. They made their way down the stairs in a line, with Garrick leading and Sunny right behind him, then Kai and Mira still holding hands, then Princess Seris clutching her notebook, and Elowen at the very back with her sword glowing a soft, steady white. The stairs went down much farther than Kai had expected, around and around, until he lost count of the turns and could see his own breath hanging in the air.

Then, from somewhere far below them, Kai heard a voice through Divine Echo. It was so faint that it could have been the wind rushing through the tunnels, but it was a woman’s voice, and it wasn’t Celestine’s thin, raspy one, or the Tide Mother’s, or the Lady of the Silver Moon’s. This voice was warmer than any of them, and so weak that it sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

"Hurry," the voice whispered.

Kai stopped walking so suddenly that Mira ran straight into his back.

"Kai?" Mira whispered. "What’s wrong?"

Kai couldn’t answer her, because his heart was pounding against his ribs, and in the back of his mind, Syraphim had gone completely silent.

[Kai]

Her voice was trembling so badly that he could barely make out the words.

[That was my mother]